Many stadiums and auditoriums are used for multiple purposes involving differing seating and floorspace demands. For example, many outdoor stadiums are used alternately for football, baseball, and track; and indoor auditoriums are often used for theatrical shows; large meetings, basketball, gymnastics, ballroom dancing, etc., and the seating and space requirements for all such sports and/or activities differ radically. As a result it is highly desirable to provide roll-away seating so that space can be cleared for one activity, or extra seating provided for another.
An important aspect of changing the seating provisions of stadiums and auditoriums is the time and labor required to effect the change. For example, an afternoon football game may be followed by a night baseball game and it may be necessary to make a major change in the short period of an hour or two. To be able to do it rapidly and with a minimum of labor is highly desirable.
Another important consideration is security of structure and safety of personnel. The seating must be readily collapsible, but it must not be so easily collapsed that the occupants can do it inadvertently during normal use. In addition, once the seats have been collapsed for stowage, unless they remain securely in the collapsed position, they can be damaged during the telescoping stowage operation.
Still another factor has to do with the weight of long rows of seats. In general, stadium seats weigh about 25 lbs. Thus, a row of, say, 14 seats will weigh 350 lbs., i.e., too much weight for a single man to lift or even to collapse gently from one end of the row, to say nothing of the distortion (twisting) along the row which such weight would impose on the structure. It would, therefore, be highly desirable to provide mechanism whereby raising or lowering an entire extended row of seats may be done by the application of a relatively small force at one end only of the row.
Another factor relates to automatic operation. In a typical modern installation the telescoping platforms are motor driven and can be remotely "push button" controlled by a single operator for moving into place one or more rows of a multi-tiered arrangement. In conjunction with such automatic operation it would also be desirable to provide for automatic "push button" control for raising and lowering the respective rows of seats, and thereby permit a rapid change of state of an auditorium by a single operator.
The present invention, therefore, has as a general object, the provision of means whereby extended rows of seats may be collapsed quickly and easily with a minimum of labor. A further object is to provide such equipment with a substantially tamperproof mechanism for holding extended rows of seat both in the upright and collapsed positions while still permitting quick and efficient release to be performed when desired. Further objects include the provision of gravity counter-balancing for all seats of an extended row whereby long rows of interconnected seats may be raised and lowered from one end only by the application of a relatively small force to the end seat. Other objects relate to the provision of automatic operation such that an entire tier of seats can be either set up or stowed by remote "push button" control.